


take a back seat (ain't ready)

by susiecarter



Category: Gridlocked (2015)
Genre: Casual Sex, Denial of Feelings, Extra Treat, Fuckbuddies, Idiots in Love, M/M, Post-Canon, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 23:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21241922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Brody tries to make sure David's having the optimal fuckbuddy experience. Except it turns out David may have been doing the same thing for him, and maybe they'd both like to try something a little different.





	take a back seat (ain't ready)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theae/gifts).

> Your fuckbuddies-catching-feelings prompt was way too perfect for these guys to pass up! I hope you like this, theaetetus, and happy Shipoween. :D
> 
> Title adapted from the lyrics of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", because I just couldn't talk myself out of it.

It happens the first time Brody flies back to New York to see David.

He doesn't mean for it to, exactly. It's just—it's _so good_ to see David again, so good to be back in his craptastic apartment. So good to be sitting there, sucking down David's cheap beers, while David makes long-suffering faces at him and hardly talks to him at all and doesn't kick him out.

It's great. It's even better than Brody had been expecting, even better than he'd been prepared for. And he's been wanting to come back for months, thinking about it all that time, but it wasn't like he could've cut out on the press tour. He'd just had to _wait_.

At least he's got the breathing room for it now. In more ways than one: not only can he afford the plane trip a thousand times over, thanks to how well the movie did, but he's made back a lot of the goodwill he'd burned. He can actually convince people to let him go to New York just because he wants to, these days, and they only sort of expect him to set something on fire while he does it.

That part's nice, too.

But getting to see David again—that's far and away the best of all.

Brody handled it fine, going back to LA, getting dropped right back into the middle of his life like he was the same guy who'd been shoved out of it. But he isn't that guy these days. Not quite. And nobody back there knows it. Nobody back there _gets_ it, because they didn't see it happen. _I don't know who I am anymore_—that's what he'd told David, once, and at the time it had been true. But trapped in that facility, he'd had to start figuring it the fuck out pretty fast, and David had been right there with him.

If anybody knows who he is these days—who _he_ is, not Brody Walker: Movie Star—it's David. And Brody can feel it, everybody else looking at him and seeing Brody Walker: Movie Star, and it's been all too easy to start getting kind of turned around again. To start losing sight of himself, the self he's only just realized he has and even kind of likes, and slide straight back into that rut.

But David's stone-cold no-bullshit stare cuts through all that in an instant, and Brody can't fucking get enough of it.

He tells David all about LA, about how everything's been going since the movie's release, a whole torrent of shit that hardly matters at all compared to getting to come back here and sit on David's lumpy couch. And David humors him, rolls his eyes at the Hollywood bullshit and scoffs his way through Brody's descriptions of press parties, tells him what a dumbass he is three or four times.

And then he looks at Brody and then away, clears his throat and kind of hunches up his shoulders, and says, "So, uh. How are you, kid? For real."

Which makes something get all hot and kind of tight in Brody's chest, so that he's got to clear his throat right back and blink a couple times before he can say, "Good, man. I'm—I'm good." And it's also probably why the next thing he does is blurt, "I missed you."

That makes David look at him again. His eyes are steady, and dark, and kind of—searching. And Brody's pretty sure he doesn't mean it in a bad way, when he says gently, "Told you you were a dumbass."

It gets late.

They order pizza, turn the TV on and then don't watch it. Brody keeps talking.

He gets a little desperate. Reaching, rambling. He just—he doesn't want to stop. He doesn't want to let it end, doesn't want to have to leave. He's here for the whole weekend, and David's still on furlough or whatever anyway, since he fucked up his gunshot wound again with all that running around getting beaten half to death. But it still isn't going to be enough time.

There's no way it's ever going to be enough time, he thinks, and that hot tight knot in his chest burns hotter, strains tighter.

So yeah, maybe he's got a lot of feelings. Maybe he's freaking out just a little. Maybe he's looking for some kind of excuse, _any_ kind of excuse, not to go just yet.

But he still doesn't mean for it to happen. He still doesn't _intend_ to end up with David's dick in his ass. Not exactly.

He's not even totally sure how it _does_ happen. Not that he doesn't remember—he didn't drink nearly enough of David's awful beer for that. It's just that it seems so nuts, and he can't begin to explain why it worked. He didn't even—he didn't even put the moves on David, not for real.

Something had given it away. Something about the way David had been holding himself, rubbing absently at the nape of his neck with one hand, not quite looking Brody in the face. And Brody had known even before he'd opened his mouth and started talking that he was probably going to start working his way around to, _Look, it's after midnight, and I'm still going to be stuck with you tomorrow. Let me get some sleep already, huh_—

"Or," Brody had said over him, way too loud, before he could get that far. And then—well.

Then he'd just kind of reached for David's lap, and grabbed his dick.

It's there where things get fuzzy, a little. Just because it had felt so clear in his head: yeah, sometimes back in the day he'd been able to convince people to keep him around longer by letting them fuck him, sucking them off, whatever it was they'd wanted to do. Easiest way to earn himself "just one more chance", for a while there, and he hadn't minded that much. It wasn't a big deal.

But this was _David_, and fuck, jesus, what the hell had he been thinking? Of all the stupid old habits to rear its ugly head in front of David, this one was only going to make David kick him out on his ass—

He'd already been cringing a little, grimacing at himself, ready for it.

But it didn't happen. David just breathed in, kind of weird and sharp, and stared at him. Grabbed him, but just to—just to guide the grasp of his hand right where David wanted it. Just to grip him by the back of the neck and hold him there and—kiss him.

And then they fuck. Right there on the sofa, and then again in David's bed. Almost silent about it, except for the noises David fucks out of Brody, the half-swallowed sounds Brody can feel caught in David's chest where it's pressed against his back. And later, Brody goes over the whole thing in 4K, HD, surround-sound, savoring every single detail while he rubs one out in the hotel shower. But while it's happening—

While it's happening, he can hardly think at all. His face is hot, his heart is pounding. He can't seem to figure out what the fuck he should be doing; not that it matters that much, when David can just move him where he wants him and hold him there, and god, that's hot too. He feels like he should say something, like he should be—selling David on this somehow, talking as dirty as he knows how, or just begging for it, telling David how fucking big he is and how good he feels. Something sexy, something hot, so David will decide he made the right decision. So David might want to do it again.

But it all gets caught in his throat. Because he also can't shake the picture he had in his head. What should have happened, what was supposed to happen. The way, way more plausible outcome of Brody doing something as dumb as groping an ex-military SWAT officer who inexplicably seemed to maybe like him.

Compared to that, this feels like some kind of weird dream. Like a soap bubble he could break if he moves wrong, if he talks too loud, if he breathes on it too hard. So he swallows it all down and rolls with it, lets David do whatever the fuck he wants and tries not to come too fast, tries not to make too much noise; because the last thing he wants to do is wake himself up.

Brody leaves, after. They don't talk about it, not that night or the next day. They don't talk about it at all.

Brody heads back to LA. David drives him to the airport, wishes him a good trip and silently suffers through Brody giving him an awkward one-armed hug, which Brody can appreciate for the warmly affectionate gesture that it is when it's coming from David.

He lives his life. He does some more interviews. He gets sent scripts, reads through them and makes considering noises. A bunch of them are more action movies; he keeps catching himself wondering idly what David would think of them, what David would have to say about the way the characters who are supposed to be military, SWAT, cops, are acting in them.

And after a few months, he flies back to New York, and visits David, and they fuck again.

They fuck again, and again, and again. With his newfound and increasingly impressive net worth, Brody starts renting an apartment in the city, gives himself a better excuse to be back there every couple of weeks.

They don't talk about it. It's cool. It's not a problem.

It works out great, in fact. Of everybody in basically the whole world, Brody can be pretty much 100% sure David's not fucking him to try to get anything out of him, or because he wants to meet somebody even more famous than Brody, or because he wants to attend a premiere. And David—well. Brody doesn't really have any idea what David's thinking. But it's got to be convenient, having somebody who's not going to be weird about his scars or whatever, about that almost-healed gunshot wound. Somebody who isn't any work; who isn't trying to _date_ him or anything, who likes to hang out and drink beer, likes to listen to his terse-ass SWAT stories and lie around and get fucked.

Really, when Brody looks at it that way, it makes perfect sense that David wouldn't mind landing himself a fuckbuddy.

And he tries hard to be good. He tries hard to make it easy. He was—he used to be kind of a selfish douchebag, he can admit it. But he's not that guy anymore, or at least he's working on it. And it's not like it's a _hardship_, to roll over for David the second David puts a hand on him, when it's late and David's eyes have gotten all dark and heavy, when David sets his beer bottle down and starts wetting his lips.

He's up for anything. Why wouldn't he be? He's done it all before and then some. Even if he hadn't, it's not easy to think of shit he wouldn't want David to do to him, as long as David wanted to do it. And David doesn't ask for much, really. Or—he doesn't ask for anything, not out loud. He seems to kind of like holding Brody down; which is fine, because that's super fucking hot, and Brody lets him know that at proportional length and volume. He likes getting sucked off, too, almost as much as he likes fucking. Likes getting jerked off, even—doesn't seem to have any complaints at all, the time they just end up riding each other's thighs and sucking each other's tongues down their throats, one long frantic friction-hot half-hour.

But Brody tries to be good anyway. Tries to think about what David might want, how he might want it, and tries to make sure he knows it's on the table.

It's not going to be enough to keep David around forever, obviously. But Brody's still maybe a little too selfish to not wring every single drop he can get out of this, before David tells him to buzz off.

It doesn't even occur to him that he might have missed anything. Not until this one night in June.

Late June, and even after the sun goes down it's still sweltering, heat rising up off all that concrete and pavement. David's hauled out two creaky old stand-up fans and he's got them going full-bore, rattling away—and they're moving all this hot stuffy air around in circles just great, but that's about it.

They've both already stripped their shirts off. Not even to fuck, just because it's too goddamn hot to leave them on. Also, makes it easier to press a beer bottle fresh out of David's fridge right into the small of David's back.

David doesn't yelp or anything, obviously. He just tenses up all over—and man, that does beautiful things to all the muscles in his back—and then turns, real slow and ominous, like the _Jaws_ theme should be playing in the distance somewhere.

"Hey, man," Brody starts, hands out, defensive. "Look, I was just trying to help you cool off, okay, I'm—no, wait, my _beer_—"

No good. David just tackles him to the couch, pins him there—doesn't seem to care that his beer's splashed out across his bare chest, except that the corner of his mouth starts to slant up when Brody gasps and curses him out. "Oops," he says mildly, and doesn't mean it even a little bit, and Brody's about to start telling him exactly how not-fooled by that he is when David leans down and occupies his mouth with something else.

He gets half a word out around David's tongue, maybe, and then happily gives up; closes his eyes and hooks an arm around David's spectacular fucking shoulders, and kisses back. God, he loves it when David wants to do this. Probably not standard fuckbuddies, in the strictest sense, to start making out like this sometimes when everybody's still got pants on.

And of course he'd better be careful not to hold things up. He wants David to get what he's looking for out of this, not get stuck feeling like he's got to cater to Brody too much.

So he parts his thighs a little wider around David's knee where it's pressed into the couch cushions between them, curls into David a little more insistently: hips up, ass probably approximately where David would like it to be.

And he's not expecting David to sigh into his mouth. Maybe Brody's splitting hairs, but it doesn't sound like a _good_ sigh, like an mm-fuck-yeah sigh. It sounds kind of—tired.

Shit, Brody thinks blankly. Shit, he's closer than he thought he was to running out of real estate here—

"Right," David mutters, absent, as if to himself, and reaches between Brody's thighs for his own belt, starts unbuckling it.

He's not smiling.

"Whoa, hey," Brody says, and catches his hands. "Hang on, man. What's that face for, huh?"

David blinks down at him. "I guess it's a little late to break this to you," he says after a second, all mild, "but—this is what my face looks like, kid."

Brody gives him a level stare so he'll know Brody's not buying it.

And then he bites his lip, and sucks in a deep breath through his nose, and tells himself to be a fucking adult about this. To be the halfway-decent guy who came out of that SRT facility, and not the dipshit who went in.

"You get that you don't have to do this if you're not into it, right? Like, that's not why I come over here. Well, okay," Brody amends, in the grip of possibly too great a spirit of honesty, "it's a little bit why, but—it's not like you've got to make sure you pony up some dick for me, or else 'oh, I'm done, great to see you, better be in the mood for it when I come back next week'."

David huffs out a breath through his nose, shakes his head a little and looks down. "No, it's fine," he says shortly. "Let's do it."

Brody stares at him. "Are you fucking kidding me? Dude, I don't know what you were expecting, but let me spell this out for you: I want people who are going to fuck me to, you know, _want to fuck me_—"

"_You_ won't fuck _me_," David bites out.

He looks immediately like he wishes he hadn't said it, jaw knotting itself up tight, throat working.

And for a second Brody doesn't even understand it. "_I_ won't," he starts to say—and then he stops, mouth slack, comprehension dawning. David doesn't mean fuck him like sleep with him, he means fuck him like _fuck_ him.

Whoa.

Brody swallows. "I, uh," he hears himself say, and strains desperately to get a fucking grip. Because—

Well. Because it's not like David's _wrong_.

He'd just kind of figured, that's all. That David would want to, that that was the appeal for him. Brody liked getting fucked plenty, and he'd done it before. It was part of the way people had always talked about him—oh, his agent had set him up like a ladies' man for the press, trying to land him these action roles, but that was different. And he'd heard it all before: his face, his eyes. His smart little mouth, and all the uses he could put it to. And yeah, his ass.

And David just doesn't _look_ like a guy who's at risk of earning permanent residency in his bicurious phase. There are lots of dudes who are willing to get their dicks sucked, or want somewhere to stick them and don't care too much where, but taking it up the ass is in a whole different category. And somehow it's especially hard to imagine _David_ panting to take it, and from a guy he could probably bench-press if he tried.

But then Brody had had some trouble getting his head around David wanting to fuck him at all in the first place. So maybe his imagination's not the most reliable source of intel around.

"Okay," he manages, "no, you're—you're right. Totally fair. Party foul, dude, my bad."

"Jesus," David mutters, letting his eyes fall shut. "Look, don't get hung up on this, okay? Just forget it."

"What? No," Brody says. "No way, are you kidding me? You think this is a _problem_?"

David blinks, and stares at him.

And with his whole chest bare, it's actually really easy to see the faint red flush that's working its way up toward his face.

"I mean, don't get me wrong," Brody adds hastily. "I like your dick. I _love_ your dick—"

"Jesus Christ, I changed my mind, get out—"

"—and you can give it to me any way you want, I swear. I'm into it. I'm—I'm into _you_, man."

David goes quiet, and looks down at him, and doesn't move.

Flushes even redder, though.

"I'm flexible," Brody clarifies. "That's all I'm saying. I'm up for whatever." He clears his throat. "I just figured you liked it that way, and I wanted you to like it. I wanted you to keep liking it. You know?"

David's lips press tight for a second. "Yeah," he says slowly. "I do."

And—well. He probably gets that a lot himself, Brody thinks, except the other way around. With heat like he's packing, and Brody telling him how good it was all the time—maybe he's been trying to make sure Brody got what _he_ wanted out of this. Maybe he's been trying not to be selfish, too.

"You sure?" David adds, all gravelly, after they've spent a little longer staring uncertainly at each other.

"Yeah, dude, totally," Brody says immediately. "Have you _seen_ your ass? Come on."

And David stays right where he is for a second; and then something in him kind of relaxes a little, indefinable. His eyes get all heavy again, and his voice does that thing Brody always loves—quiet, level, warm and amused—when he says, "Well, as you may have noticed, Brody, my face is up here, and my ass is back there. It's not a really a view I get a lot."

"Well, trust me," Brody says a little hoarsely, "it's not half bad." And he'd never have done this before, wouldn't have wanted David thinking he was asking for something David wasn't interested in giving him, but—it's okay now, right? It's okay to slide his hands down David's sides, thumbs following the curve of his ribs; to grip David's hips, dig in with his fingertips just to feel the solid strength of them, and then—and then grab David's ass, and _squeeze_.

And David's head drops back a little, and he wets his lips, and that flush has climbed his throat, now, settling into his cheeks.

"And I think it's about time I appreciated it a little," Brody adds, "if that's okay with you."

"Shut up," David tells him, soft, scraped-quiet, and leans down over him to kiss him again.

So they still fuck, but it's a little different. Not in a bad way or anything, but it is. Just—getting to touch David like this. He hadn't even realized how careful he was being, trying to avoid scaring David off or giving him a reason to call it quits on this thing they're doing; but he really, really had. In a weird way, he'd been so busy trying to make sure he was a good fuck for David that he hadn't actually been paying attention.

But he is now.

And David is—David is kind of beautiful. It feels like Brody can't stop looking at him, drinking him in, all that broadness and steadiness and muscle; the scars, the tattoos. Can't stop touching him, either. And David gets red and quiet under all the attention, but he doesn't tell Brody to stop.

Brody lingers over it maybe a little too much. Just fingering him, for a while, just because it's so—it's fucking amazing, watching him grit his teeth and squeeze his eyes shut, curse under his breath and move his hips into it, with his hands fisted up tight in the sheets like he can't help it. David has to lurch up and grab him by the nape of the neck, growl out, "Jesus fucking Christ, just _fuck_ me already," for Brody to realize how long he's been going at it, how long he's made David wait.

"Okay, okay, jeez," he says aloud, and laughs when David glares at him.

And then it gets kind of quiet and serious on him again when he's—when they're actually fucking. It's just hard not to get kind of blown away by it all: by David's thighs under his hands, David opened up wide for him; by David's chest heaving, and his face, the way he keeps biting his lip, the way he closes his hands around Brody's and doesn't let go.

By—David, pretty much.

Something about that thought feels too big to look at head-on, too much to hold. And he tries to keep a lid on it, he really does. Tries to let it spill over some other way, leaning down and kissing David hard; too hard, maybe, but David just grabs him by the nape of the neck and kisses back even harder.

And that just makes it worse, whatever it is. That just makes it worse, and when Brody breaks away it's because it's totally impossible to keep his mouth shut one single second longer, to stop himself from blurting out, breathless and unsteady, "You're it for me, man. You know that, right?"

David goes still under him. Had his eyes screwed shut, but he cracks one open, looks at Brody and doesn't say a word.

Shit. Bad timing.

"I mean, uh," Brody says, trying to backtrack. "Until you—get sick of me or whatever. I didn't mean—"

"Jesus," David says to the ceiling, flatly, and then reaches up and grabs him by the _ear_, ow, what the hell.

"Hey, what the hell?"

"I'm not going to say this more than once," David grits out, "so listen up, okay? I was sick of you within about an hour of meeting you, kid."

Brody swallows hard.

And then David eases up a little—isn't grabbing his ear anymore, but just touching the shell of it; sliding his fingers kind of tentatively into Brody's hair, skimming his thumb along the stubble at Brody's jaw.

"Doesn't seem to have done me any good," he adds, very quietly.

Brody stares at him.

"Now, if it's not too much to ask," David says, all level and normal again, "I'm pretty sure you were in the middle of something here?"

"Right," Brody says automatically. "Right," and then does not keep fucking him at all—presses him down into the bed and kisses him, first, and maybe that's not what he was angling for but he's just going to have to fucking put up with it.


End file.
